Not A Last Resort
by ominous-roses
Summary: Devin and Louis Tomlinson are best friends, but will they ever be more than that? A One Direction AU one-shot.


**Just a little one-shot I wrote for an awesome tumblr user. I hope she, and everyone else who reads this, enjoys it!**

**-Olivia**

* * *

><p>"Devin let's go!" called Louis from downstairs.<p>

I nearly tripped rushing to put one of my shoes on and called "I'll be right there, calm down," to my impatient best friend.

He made a small groan and I heard him pacing around downstairs. "Why do you always take so long to get ready?" he whined.

I rolled my eyes and opened my door, jogging over to staircase. "You can't talk," I told him as I walked down the stairs. "You spend, like, half an hour on your hair every morning. That took me about ten minutes."

He gave me a grin. "Yeah, well, perfect hair takes time. Not like you would know anything about perfect hair…"

I slapped him in the arm. "Shut up, you. Are we going to go or what?"

"Absolutely!" he said with a smile. "After you, madame," he said jokingly, bowing as he pulled the door open for me.

I grabbed my purse off the chair and walked outside. "It's actually mademoiselle. But I shall let it slide."

Louis drove us to the nearest mall, which took a while, but we had a good time anyways. Louis blasted the radio and sang along to every single song, doing corny dance moves that were borderline painful to watch. I tried to scold him when he danced, telling him to keep his eyes on the road so we didn't die, but it was hard to sound serious and threatening when you were bursting with laughter. "You know you don't want me to stop," he smirked at me with a wink.

I pursed my lips, holding back a smile. "No comment."

At that moment, _The Scientist_ by Coldplay came on the radio. Louis suddenly turned very serious in his singing. And not jokingly serious as he usually was. I found myself staring at him, taking in his face: his jaw, covered in a little stubble, his blue eyes and long eyelashes, his lips, which were singing along to the radio, filling the car with his beautiful voice:

"_Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry,_

_You don't know how lovely you are._

_I had to find you, tell you I need you,_

_Tell you that I set you apart._

_Tell me your secrets, ask me your questions._

_Oh, let's go back to the start._

_Running in circles, coming up tails,_

_Heads on a science apart._

_Nobody said it was easy._

_It's such a shame for us to part._

_Nobody said it was easy._

_No one ever said it would be this hard._

_We're going back to the start."_

I completely forgot where I was as I got lost in the words that he was singing, so it came as a shock when the song ended and I saw that we were already in the parking lot. Louis smiled at me, but there was something almost sad about it. "Ready?" he asked.

I smiled back and nodded. "Thanks for doing this, by the way," I said as I climbed out of the car. "Everyone else had already gotten their dresses and I really didn't want to go alone."

"It's no problem," he replied, slinging an arm around my shoulder. "Gotta have my best friend looking beautiful at her junior prom. And who better to give her advice on how she looks than a good looking young man like myself?"

I laughed. "You flatter yourself. You may be a year older than me, but that by no means makes you a young man. Actually, I'm pretty sure that the older you get, the younger you behave."

He shrugged. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"No, I'm _definitely _right!"

We walked to the Macy's store at the end of the mall and headed for the dresses. Louis looked distastefully at the sparkling, rhinestone encrusted dresses that seemed to occupy all of the racks. "Have at it," I told him, "I want to see you pick out some dresses for me to try on."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure you want to do that? I will probably pick the most hideous one in here."

I gave a small laugh, going through one rack. "I doubt that. You're probably the best dressed guy at school."

"But that doesn't mean I can pick dresses."

"Just give it a try," I insisted. "At the very least we might get a laugh out of your picks."

With a sigh he moved over to another rack. I turned my head to watch him look at the dresses. The way he was moving hangers reminded me of how someone might pick up used tissues before throwing them away. I laughed at the way he wrinkled his nose at basically every dress he saw. I turned back to the dresses in front of me, but I felt my eyes wandering back to Louis, noticing the way he walked and shifted from one foot to another. I noticed his hands. They looked strong. I knew they were strong. I could tell that from the few times we had held hands. My stomach gave a little flip at those memories. I sighed and pulled a decent looking dress off of the rack. _It's not like that, _I reminded myself. _You're friends. He wouldn't even go to prom with you when you asked him to go, just as a friend, to do you a favor. He doesn't like you like that. _

After about browsing through dresses for a while, I brought the ones I had found to the dressing room. Louis waited outside my door as I changed into the first dress. It was pink taffeta with rhinestones scattered all over it in some sort of a pattern. I snorted as I looked at myself in the mirror, immediately realizing that this dress was better to be left on the hanger. I opened the door to the stall and showed Louis. He laughed and shook his head. "No. Absolutely not. That's—that's really bad," he said through his laughter.

"Shut up!" I told him, laughing along. "I know it's horrible, I'm not blind. No need to repeat it."

The next dresses received similar reactions:

"No."

"No."

"Oh, dear god, no!"

"What _is_ that?"

"Nobody could possibly wear that dress."

"Just—just put on the next one."

With a sigh, I realized that I had tried on my last dress. "Well, I guess we can go now," I said, feeling disheartened at my failure to find a dress. All of my other friends had found theirs the first time they went out shopping. Then again, they all had dates too, so maybe I was always destined to be the odd one out.

Louis smiled at me. "But you still haven't tried on my pick yet."

I quirked my head to the side. "You picked one out? I didn't think you would."

He nodded. "I'll be right back." He ran back out into the store. I had no clue what he was doing. He was being all sneaky all of a sudden. That—well, that was _exactly_ like him, but I still found it strange for some reason. A minute later, he was back, carrying a strapless dress made out of light blue chiffon. It had an empire waistline and the skirt fell in small ruffles to the floor. "Here you go," he said, handing it to me. "I hope it's not completely horrible."

I couldn't say anything. I was still gaping at the beautiful dress. I wordlessly shut the door to the changing room and put on the dress.

The second I looked in the mirror, I knew it was the one.

I slowly opened the door, desperately hoping that Louis loved it as much as I did.

His face lit up when he saw me and he spent a solid minute just looking at me. I felt completely exposed as his eyes trailed over me, and I felt myself nervously twisting my fingers together. "What do you think?" I asked, looking at my feet.

He didn't answer. But as I stared at the floor, I saw his feet, clad in his red Toms, appear next to mine. He took my hands in his and squeezed them. "You're beautiful," he whispered.

I grinned, feeling my insides starting to melt. "Thanks."

"I suppose I should ask you then," he said quietly.

I looked up at him, not knowing what he was talking about. "What do you mean? Ask me what?"

He smiled at me nervously. "Will you go to prom with me?"

I felt my eyes widen in shock. "What? But I—I asked you and you said no."

"I said no because you were asking me as friends, just so you would have someone to go with," he explained. "I don't want to be a last resort. I want to be your date." He paused for a moment before adding, "Actually, I want to be more than your prom date. I _really_ want to be your boyfriend. But I thought that might be pushing it at this point since I don't even know if you like me as more than a friend. Although, I suppose I _am_ asking you to be my girlfriend since I just said all that. So all the cards are on the table." He smiled at me. "It's your choice, Devin."

I was speechless. Where had this come from? I had been so sure that his feelings for me were completely platonic when we got here today and now…this. To say I was happy would be the understatement of the entire century.

As my silence stretched on, Louis' smile began to fade. "Shit," he whispered, backing away a little and loosening his grip on my hands. "I shouldn't have said anything. Now it's going to be really awkward…"

I snapped back to reality, my fingers tightening around his. "No!" I said quickly, a smile making its way over my face. "No I—I really want to go to prom with you. As your date. And be more than friends. And all that. And just—yes!"

"Wait, you're saying yes?" Louis confirmed, obviously slightly shocked that everything was working out. I was shocked too. When I nodded, he pulled me into a tight hug, his arms wrapping around my waist and lifting me off the floor a little. I giggled as a thick cloud of bliss enveloped my mind. That cloud got even thicker as Louis brought a hand to my cheek, gently caressing it, and leaning his face closer to mine.

My eyes slid shut and then we were kissing, our lips moving softly together, slow and sweet. The perfect first kiss.

When we reluctantly broke away from each other, I met his bright blue eyes and told him, "You're never a last resort."


End file.
